“We must let go of the life we planned in order to embrace the one that we have waiting for us.” ~ Joseph Campbell

In yoga tonight, our teacher, Jackie, talked about the importance of following our own dharma, not that of someone else. Jackie used a chapter from the Bhagavad Gita as an explanation: in Chapter 3 Arjuna realizes the people he will be going up against in battle are his friends and relatives. He tells Krishna he can’t fight them. Krishna replies that Arjuna has no choice: it is his dharma — the purpose for which he was born.

Like Arjuna, we all have a purpose in this life, something we were born to do. If we accept reincarnation, then that purpose is something to which we agreed before we took this birth.* If we are Judea/Christian, then we acknowledge God had a purpose in creating our life. We are not accidents. We are not mistakes.

Once we have found our dharma, our ego is no longer part of the game. It falls away naturally as we focus all of our inner-being on achieving our goal.

The greatest gift of yoga is the gift of helping us find our path, or dharma — the reason we were born. When we practice all Eight Limbs of Yoga eventually our path will become apparent.

This limb of yoga explains this concept:

5. Isvarapranidhana – Celebration of the SpiritualIsvarapranidhana means “to lay all your actions at the feet of God.” It is the contemplation on God (Isvara) in order to become attuned to god and god’s will. It is the recognition that the spiritual suffuses everything and through our attention and care we can attune ourselves with our role as part of the Creator. The practice requires that we set aside some time each day to recognize that there is some omnipresent force larger than ourselves that is guiding and directing the course of our lives. vi ~ William J. D. Doran

Some paths are to learn to live in relationship. Some people are here to learn to love unconditionally. Some are here to show the path to others. Only you know, and everything you need to know is already inside you. This is why we keep peeling the onion. Eventually the answer will appear. I promise.

Yours on the path, Chris

*My teacher, Ram Dass, taught there are two levels of reincarnation: the pod and the pool. If we are new to the experience of life we are in the cycle of automatic birth, death, rebirth. However, at some point something happens and we jump into the pod (usually this is some kind of direct experience of momentarily coming awake.) Once in the pod, we have an opportunity to decide what it is we would like to do with our life, before we are born. We choose the people with whom we will travel, we choose our situations, etcetera. Then it becomes a matter of realizing our dharma and living it.